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WILLIAM T. STEAD 




Class JBJELLLk. 

Book ,24 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



HOW I KNOW THAT 
THE DEAD RETURN 

By WILLIAM T. STEAD 



An account of the remarkable personal experiences of 

the author which dispelled all doubt in his mind 

as to the reality of a future life 



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BOSTON 

THE BALL PUBLISHING CO. 

1909 



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Copyright, igop 
By The Ball Publishing Co. 



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INTRODUCTION 

The personal experience of the 
editor of The Review of Reviews 
which is recorded in the following 
pages is, in many ways, startling. 
There has been such a volume of tes- 
timony from persons of established 
reputation, whose veracity is unques- 
tioned and whose judgment in every- 
day matters is considered excellent 
that few, who are acquainted with 
the present evidence, have little 
doubt as to the existence of the 
phenomena. A prominent Roman 
Catholic clergyman, who recently 
gave a series of lectures on Psychical 
Research before the Catholic cler- 



INTRODUCTION 

gymen of Boston said, that to deny 
the existence of the phenomena, far 
from being a mark of superior in- 
telligence, rather showed the igno- 
rance of the person as to what scien- 
tific investigators were doing. 

Many of these investigators do 
not agree with Mr. Stead in his in- 
terpretation of the phenomena but if 
one admits that he has recorded his 
experiences accurately his conclu- 
sions seem to be the most plausible. 

The Editor. 

Boston, Feb. i, 1909. 



HOW I KNOW THE DEAD 
RETURN 



Cecil Rhodes once told me that 
early in life he had devoted much 
thought to the question whether or 
not there was a God. He came to 
the conclusion that there was a 50 
percent, chance that there was a God 
and therefore that it was a matter of 
the first importance to ascertain 
what God wanted him to do. In 
like fashion I would ask the reader 
to consider whether or not there is 
any proof that the conscious life of 
his personality will persist after 
death. If he examines the evidence 
he will probably come to the conclu- 
sion that there is a certain per cent. 
1 



HOW I KNOW 

chance that such is the case. He 
may put it at 50 per cent, at 90 per 
cent., or at 10 per cent., or even at 
a 1 per cent, off chance that death 
does not end all. In face of the fact 
that the immense majority of the 
greatest minds in all ages have 
firmly believed that the personality 
survives death, he will hardly ven- 
ture to maintain that he is justified 
in asserting that there is not even a 
1 per cent chance that he will go on 
living after his body has returned to 
its elements. 

Of course, if he should be abso- 
lutely convinced that not even such 
an irreducible minimum of a chance 
exists that he may be mistaken, if he 
thinks that he knows he is right and 
that Plato and the Apostle Paul 
were wrong, I beg him to read no 
further. This article is not written 
2 



THE DEAD RETURN 

for him. I am addressing myself 
solely to those who are willing to 
admit that there is at least an off 
chance that all the religions and 
most of the philosophies — to say 
nothing of the universal instinct of 
the human race — may have had 
some foundation for the conviction 
that there is a life after death. Put 
the percentage of probability as low 
as you like, if there be even the 
smallest chance of its truth it is 
surely an obvious corollary from 
such an admission that there is no 
subject more worthy careful and sci- 
entific examination. Is it a fact or 
is it not? How can we arrive at 
certainty on the subject? It may be 
that this is impossible. But we 
ought not to despair of arriving at 
some definite solution of the ques- 
tion one way or the other, until we 
3 



HOW I KNOW 

have exhausted all the facilities for 
investigation at our disposal. Noth- 
ing can be less scientific than to ig- 
nore the subject and to go on living 
from day to day in complete uncer- 
tainty whether we are entities which 
dissolve like the morning mist when 
our bodies die, or whether we are 
destined to go on living after the 
change we call death. 

Assuming that I carry the reader 
so far with me, I proceed to ask 
what kind of evidence can be pro- 
duced to justify the acceptance of a 
belief in the persistence of person- 
ality after death, not as a mere hy- 
pothesis, but as an ascertained and 
demonstrable fact. 

There are many kinds of evidence, 

to which I only refer to avoid the 

imputation of having ignored them, 

because I propose to confine myself 

4 



THE DEAD RETURN 

exclusively to the one description of 
evidence which seems to me the most 
convincing. 



The recent applications of elec- 
tricity in wireless telegraphy and 
wireless telephony, while proving 
nothing in themselves as to the na- 
ture or permanence of personality, 
are valuable as enabling us to illus- 
trate the difficulties as well as the 
possibilities of proving the existence 
of life after death. 

In order to form a definite idea of 
the problem which we are about to 
attack, let us imagine the grave as if 
it were the Atlantic Ocean, as it ap- 
peared to our forefathers before the 
days of Christopher Columbus. In 
order to make the parallel complete, 
it is necessary to suppose that the At- 
6 



THE DEAD RETURN 

lantic could only be traversed by 
vessels from east to west, and that 
ocean currents or strong easterly 
gales rendered it impossible for any 
voyager from Europe to America to 
return to the Old World. We shall 
thus be able to form a simple but 
perfectly clear conception of the dif- 
ficulties which I am now about to 
discuss. 

If Christopher Columbus after 
discovering America had been un- 
able to sail back across the Atlantic, 
Europe would after a time have con- 
cluded that he had perished in an 
ocean which had no further shore. 
If innumerable other voyagers had 
set out on the same westward jour- 
ney and had never returned, this 
conviction would have deepened into 
an absolute certainty. Yet Christo- 
pher Columbus and those who fol- 
7 



HOW I KNOW 

lowed him might have been living 
and thriving and founding a new 
nation on the American continent. 
It would have been impossible for 
them to convince those they had left 
behind of their continued existence. 
Europe would have regarded Amer- 
ica as 

That undiscovered bourne from whence 
No traveller returns. 

And their friends and relatives 
would have mourned the brave 

Who went out but who return not. 

Yet all the while Christopher Co- 
lumbus and his gallant men would 
have been living under better condi- 
tions than those which prevailed in 
the land of their birth. 

What would have happened in 
those circumstances? In all proba- 
8 



THE DEAD RETURN 

bility the faith even of the most ar- 
dent believers in the reality of Co- 
lumbus's great vision would have 
grown dim. If it did not altogether 
die out, it would be due to the fact 
that from time to time, in the dreams 
of the night, their friends saw him 
alive and well in a strange new 
world. But everything would be 
shadowy and unreal as a dream. 

Now let us transport ourselves 
from the time of Columbus to our 
own day. We must assume that the 
original physical impossibility of 
crossing the Atlantic from west to 
east still continues. But in the in- 
tervening centuries the men who had 
crossed from east to west have in- 
creased and multiplied, and have 
built up a great nation with an ad- 
vanced civilisation on the American 
continent. Like us they discover 
9 



HOW I KNOW 

telegraphy, like us they invent and 
use the telephone. After a time they 
discover and apply the principle of 
wireless telegraphy, and after that 
they perfect the wireless telephone. 

The terrors of the unknown would 
not daunt for ever the intrepid spir- 
its of European explorers. A ship 
or ships would be equipped to cross 
the Atlantic. When their crews and 
passengers landed on the further 
shore they would discover, to their 
infinite amazement, not only that a 
vast continent existed within five 
days' steam from Liverpool, but that 
those who were thought to have per- 
ished had founded a great common- 
wealth in the New World. What 
would immediately happen? 

The newcomers, finding them- 
selves unable to return, would at once 
endeavour to utilise all the resources 
10 



THE DEAD RETURN 

of modern science to enable them to 
communicate their great discovery 
to the Old World. They would en- 
deavour to perfect and extend the 
use of wireless telegraphy, so as to 
enable them to flash the good news 
to their friends on the European 
shore. At first they would fail from 
the lack of any receiving station on 
this side. But after a while, by 
some happy chance, a wireless mes- 
sage from America might be caught 
on some sea coast Marconi station. 

When that message arrived, how 
would it be received? In all proba- 
bility it would be fragmentary, in- 
coherent, and apparently purpose- 
less. It would be set down to some 
practical joker or regarded as some 
random message sent out from some- 
where in Europe. And so for a long 
time the attempt to communicate in- 
ii 



HOW I KNOW 

formation would fail. After an in- 
terval a more coherent message 
would arrive. Efforts would be 
made to answer, but the replies might 
not arrive when anyone was in at- 
tendance at the other side; the in- 
struments might not be properly at- 
tuned, the messages might be so mu- 
tilated as to be unintelligible. A 
few cranks who had never lost the 
faith, traditional and dim, that there 
was a world beyond the seething 
waste of waters, would go on experi- 
menting, wasting time and money, 
and exposing themselves to the ridi- 
cule of the scientific world. 

At last, after innumerable disap- 
pointments, it is possible that the cap- 
tain of the last exploring expedition 
might succeed in getting through a 
message, clear, direct to the point, 
such as this : — 

12 



THE DEAD RETURN 

From Capt. Smith, of the Reso- 
lute s.s., to Lloyds, London. Alive 
and well. Discovered new world 
filled with descendants of Chris- 
topher Columbus and his men. 

What would follow the receipt of 
such a Marconigram? It would 
probably arrive so many years after 
the expedition had sailed that no 
one would at first remember who 
Captain Smith was. When the rec- 
ords were looked up, and the exist- 
ence of the ship and its commander 
recalled, there would be some sensa- 
tion, and a good deal of discussion. 
Efforts to reach the unknown land 
would be renewed, but the majority 
of practical, common-sense men of 
the world would regard the message 
as a practical joke, while men of sci- 
ence would prove to their own com- 
13 



HOW I KNOW 

plete satisfaction the absolute impos- 
sibility of any such new world exist- 
ing, and, a fortiori, of any such mes- 
sage being authentic. 

But after a time more messages 
would come. Some method would 
be discovered of despatching replies 
and of receiving answers. At last 
the scientific world would wake up 
to the recognition of the fact that a 
prima facie case had been made out 
for the strange, the almost incredible, 
phenomena that seemed to point to 
the possibility that there was another 
world beyond the Atlantic, and that 
its inhabitants could by means of 
wireless telegraphy communicate 
with Europe. The difficulties they 
would encounter would be the iden- 
tical difficulties which confront us 
in our quest for certainty as to life 
after death. But with patience and 



THE DEAD RETURN 

perseverance and careful allowance 
for the obstacles in the way of trans- 
oceanic intercourse, the existence of 
the American continent would in the 
end be established as firmly as I be- 
lieve the existence of the Other 
World is very soon about to be estab- 
lished, beyond all question or cavil. 



15 



II. 

I will now leave the illustration 
and address myself directly to an ex- 
planation of the evidence which has 
convinced me of the reality of 
the persistence of personality after 
death. 

I may make the prefatory remark 
that I have what is called the gift of 
automatic handwriting. By that I 
mean that I can, after making my 
mind passive, place my pen on paper, 
and my hand will write messages 
from friends at a distance; whether 
they are in the body or whether they 
have experienced the change called 
death, makes no difference. 

The advantage of obtaining such 
16 



THE DEAD RETURN 

automatic messages from a friend 
who is still on this side the grave is 
that it is possible to verify their ac- 
curacy by referring to the person 
from whom the message comes. I 
may say, in order to avoid misappre- 
hension, that in my case the trans- 
mitter of the message is seldom con- 
scious of having transmitted it, and 
is sometimes surprised and annoyed 
to find that his unconscious mind had 
sent the message. As an illustration 
of this I will describe one such ex- 
perience that occurred almost at the 
beginning of my experiments. 

A lady friend of mine, who can 
write with my hand at any distance 
with even more freedom than she 
can write with her own, had been 
spending the week-end at Haslemere, 
a village about thirty miles from 
London. She had promised to 
17 



HOW I KNOW 

lunch with me on Wednesday if she 
returned to town. Late on Monday 
afternoon I wished to know if she 
had left the country, and placing my 
pen on the paper I mentally asked 
if she had returned to London. My 
hand wrote as follows : — 

"I am very sorry to tell you I have 
had a very painful experience, of 
which I am almost ashamed to speak. 
I left Haslemere at 2.27 p. m. in a 
second-class carriage, in which there 
were two ladies and one gentleman. 
When the train stopped at Godal- 
ming the ladies got out, and I was 
left alone with the man. After the 
train started he left his seat and came 
close to me. I was alarmed and re- 
pelled him. He refused to go away, 
and tried to kiss me. I was furious. 
We had a struggle. I seized his um- 
brella and struck him, but it broke, 
18 



THE DEAD RETURN 

and I was beginning to fear that he 
would master me, when the train be- 
gan to slow up before arriving at 
Guildford Station. He got fright- 
ened, let go of me, and before the 
train reached the platform he 
jumped out and ran away. I was 
very much upset. But I have the 
umbrella." 

I sent my secretary up with a note 
saying merely I was very sorry to 
hear what had happened, and added, 
"Be sure and bring the man's um- 
brella on Wednesday." She wrote 
in reply, "I am very sorry you know 
anything about it. I had made up 
my mind to tell nobody. I will 
bring the broken umbrella, but it was 
my umbrella, not his." 

When she came to lunch on 
Wednesday she confirmed the story 
in every particular, and produced 
19 



HOW I KNOW 

the broken umbrella, which was hers, 
not his. How that mistake occurred 
in the transmission of the message I 
do not know. Perhaps by the soli- 
tary inaccuracy to emphasise the cor- 
rectness of the rest of the narrative. 
I may say that I had no idea as to the 
train she was travelling by, and had 
not the slightest suspicion that she 
had experienced so awkward an ad- 
venture. 

I may say that since then, for a 
period of fifteen years, I have been, 
and am still, in the habit of receiving 
similar automatic messages from 
many of my friends. In some the ■ 
percentage of error is larger, but as 
a rule the messages are astonishingly 
correct. This system of automatic 
telepathy from friends who are still 
in their bodies and who are in sym- 
pathy with me is for me as well es- 
20 



THE DEAD RETURN 

tablished as the existence of electric 
telegraphy, or any other fact capable 
of verification every day. 

The next question is whether this 
system of automatic telepathy be- 
tween the living — which corresponds 
to wireless telegraphy on land — can 
be extended to those who have cross- 
ed the river of death — an extension 
which corresponds to the transmis- 
sion of Marconigrams across the At- 
lantic. 

Upon this point I will again re- 
late my own experience. I had two 
friends, who were as devoted to each 
other as sisters. As is not unusual, 
they had promised each other that 
whichever died first would return to 
show herself to the other in order to 
afford ocular demonstration of the 
reality of the world beyond the 
grave. One of them, whose Chris- 

21 



HOW I KNOW 

tian name was Julia, died in Boston 
shortly after the pledge was given. 
Within a few weeks she aroused her 
friend from her sleep in Chicago and 
showed herself by her bedside look- 
ing radiantly happy. After remain- 
ing silent for a few minutes she 
slowly dissolved into a light mist, 
which remained in the room for half 
an hour. Some months after the 
friend in question came to England. 
She and I were staying at Eastnor 
Castle in the west of England, when 
Julia came back a second time. Her 
friend had not gone to sleep. She 
was wide awake, and again she saw 
Julia as distinct and as real as in life. 
Again she could not speak, and again 
the apparition faded away. 

Her friend told me about the sec- 
ond visit, and asked me if I could 
get a message from Julia. I offered 
22 



THE DEAD RETURN 

to try, and next morning, before 
breakfast, in my own room my hand 
wrote a very sensible message, brief, 
but to the point. I asked for evi- 
dence as to the identity of the trans- 
mitter. My hand wrote : "Tell her 
to remember what I said when last 
we came to Minerva." I protested 
that the message was absurd. My 
hand persisted and said that her 
friend would understand it. I felt 
so chagrined at the absurdity of the 
message that for a long time I re- 
fused to deliver it. When at last I 
did so her friend exclaimed, "Did 
she actually write that? Then it is 
Julia herself, and no mistake." 
"How," I asked, bewildered, "could 
you come to Minerva?" "Oh," she 
replied, "of course, you don't know 
anything about that. Julia shortly 
before her death had bestowed the 
23 



HOW I KNOW 

pet name of Minerva upon Miss Wil- 
lard, the founder of the Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union, and 
had given her a brooch with a cameo 
of Minerva. She never afterwards 
called her anything but Minerva, 
and the message which she wrote 
with your hand was substantially the 
same that she gave to me on the last 
time when Minerva and I came to 
bid her good-bye on her deathbed." 

Here again there was a slight mis- 
take. Minerva had come to her in- 
stead of Julia going to Minerva, but 
otherwise the message was correct. 

I then proposed that I should try 
for more messages. My friend sat 
at one end of a long table, I sat at 
the other. After my hand had writ- 
ten answers to various questions, I 
asked Julia, as another test of her 
identity, if she could use my hand to 
24 



THE DEAD RETURN 

call to her friend's memory some in- 
cident in their mutual lives of which 
I knew nothing. No sooner said 
than done. 

My hand wrote: "Ask her if she 
can remember when we were going 
home together when she fell and hurt 
her spine." "That fills the bill," I 
remarked, as I read out the message, 
"for I never knew that you had met 
with such an accident." Looking 
across the table, I saw that my friend 
was utterly bewildered. "But, Ju- 
lia," she objected, "I never hurt my 
spine in my life." "There," said I, 
addressing my hand reproachfully, 
"a nice mess you have made of it! I 
only asked you for one out of the 
thousand little incidents you both 
must have been through together, 
and you have gone and written what 
never happened." 
25 



HOW I KNOW 

Imp erturb ably my hand wrote, "I 
am quite right; she has forgotten." 
"Anybody can say that," I retorted; 
"can you bring it back to her mem- 
ory?" "Yes," was the reply. "Go 
ahead," I answered; "when was 
it?" Answer: "Seven years ago." 
"Where was it?" "At Streator, in 
Illinois." "How did it happen?" 
"She and I were going home from 
the office one Saturday afternoon. 
There was snow on the ground. 
When we came opposite Mrs. Buell's 
house she slipped her foot on the 
kerbstone and fell and hurt her 
back." When I read these messages 
aloud her friend exclaimed, "Oh, 
that's what you mean, Julia! I re- 
member that quite well. I was in 
bed for two or three days with a bad 
back; but I never knew it was my 
spine that was hurt." 
26 



THE DEAD RETURN 

I need not multiply similar in- 
stances. The communication thus 
begun has been kept up for over fif- 
teen years. I have no more doubt of 
the existence and the identity of Ju- 
lia than I have of the existence of 
my wife or of my sister. 

Here we had the appearance of the 
deceased in bodily form twice re- 
peated on fulfilment of a promise 
made before death. This is followed 
up by the writing of messages, at- 
tested first by an allusion to a pet 
name that seemed to reduce the mes- 
sage to nonsense, and, secondly, by 
recalling to the memory of her friend 
with the utmost particularity of de- 
tail an incident which that friend 
had forgotten. No other medium 
was concerned in the receipt of these 
messages but myself. I had no mo- 
tive to misrepresent or invent any- 
27 



THE DEAD RETURN 

thing. As my narrative proves, I 
was sceptical rather than credulous. 
But things happened just as I have 
put them down. Can you be sur- 
prised if I felt I was really getting 
into communication with the Be- 
yond? 



28 



III. 

It will be said by some of those 
who will not give me the lie as to 
the accuracy of the foregoing narra- 
tive, that it does not carry us beyond 
telepathy from the living. This 
may be admitted if telepathy from 
the unconscious mind is regarded as 
an actual fact. In this case the un- 
conscious mind telepathed what the 
conscious mind of the transmitter had 
entirely forgotten. The hypothesis 
of telepathy from the unconscious 
mind of the living can be invoked to 
account for almost any message said 
to be transmitted by the dead. But 
there is one class of messages for 
which telepathy from incarnate 
29 



HOW I KNOW 

minds, conscious or unconscious, can- 
not account. That is the class of 
messages which relate neither to past 
nor present events, but which foretell 
an event or events which have still 
to happen. 

Julia, on the very day on which 
she gave me the test messages record- 
ed above, made a prediction, which 
was givtn me not really as a predic- 
tion but as a friendly warning in- 
tended to save another friend from 
making engagements which she 
would not be able to keep, as at a cer- 
tain time she would be threje- thou- 
sand miles away in England. My 
friend laughed the warning to scorn. 
The prediction was twice repeated, 
and both times treated with con- 
tempt. Engagements were entered 
into which, when the time came, had 
to be cancelled, because my friend 
30 



THE DEAD RETURN 

found it necessary to go to the dis- 
tant place which Julia had named, 
and as Julia had predicted. 

It will be objected that the proph- 
ecy in this case may have helped 
to bring about its own fulfilment. 
Let us admit that for the sake of ar- 
gument. The same objection can- 
not be urged against the next item of 
evidence I am about to produce. 
Some years ago I had in my employ- 
ment a lady of remarkable talent, but 
of a very uncertain temper and of 
anything but robust health. She be- 
came so difficult that one January I 
was seriously thinking of parting 
with her, when Julia wrote with my 
hand, "Be very patient with E. M. ; 
she is coming over to our side before 
the end of the year." I was rather 
startled, for there was nothing to 
make me think that she was likely to 
31 



HOW I KNOW 

die. I said nothing about the mes- 
sage, and continued her in my em- 
ploy. It was, I think, about Janu- 
ary 15th or 1 6th when the warning 
was given. 

It was repeated in February, 
March, April, May, and June, each 
time the passage being written as a 
kind of reminder in the body of a 
longer communication about other 
matters. "Remember, E. M. is go- 
ing to pass over before the end of the 
year." In July E. M. inadvertently 
swallowed a tack. It lodged in her 
appendix, and she became danger- 
ously ill. The two doctors by whom 
she was attended did not expect her 
to recover. When Julia was writing 
with my hand, I remarked, "I sup- 
pose this is what you foresaw when 
you predicted E. M. would pass 
over." To my infinite surprise she 
32 



THE DEAD RETURN 

wrote, "No; she will get better of 
this, but all the same she will pass 
over before the year is out." E. M. 
did recover suddenly, to the amaze- 
ment of the doctors, and was soon do- 
ing her usual work. In August, in 
September, in October, and in No- 
vember the warning of her approach- 
ing death was each month communi- 
cated through my hand. In Decem- 
ber E. M. fell ill with influenza. 
"So it was this," I remarked to Julia, 
"that you foresaw." Again I was 
destined to be surprised, for Julia 
wrote, "No; she will not come over 
here naturally. But she will come 
before the year is out." I was 
alarmed, but I was told I could not 
prevent it. Christmas came. E. M. 
was very ill. But the old year 
passed, and she was still alive. "You 
see you were wrong," I said to Julia, 
33 



HOW I KNOW 

"E. M. is still alive." Julia replied, 
"I may be a few days out, but what 
I said is true." 

About January ioth Julia wrote to 
me, "You are going to see E. M. to- 
morrow. Bid her farewell. Make 
all necessary arrangements. You 
will never see her again on earth." 
I went to see her. She was feverish, 
coughed badly, and was expecting to 
be removed to a nursing hospital, 
where she could receive better atten- 
tion. All the time I was with her 
she talked of what she was going to 
do to carry out her work. When I 
bade her good-bye I wondered if Ju- 
lia was not mistaken. 

Two days after I received a tele- 
gram informing me that E. M. had 
thrown herself out of a four-story 
window in delirium, and had been 
picked up dead. It was within a 
34 



THE DEAD RETURN 

day or two of the end of the twelve 
months since the first warning was 
given. 

This narrative can be proved by 
the manuscript of the original mes- 
sages, and by the signed statement 
of my two secretaries, to whom, un- 
der the seal of secrecy, I communi- 
cated the warnings of Julia. No bet- 
ter substantiated case of prevision 
written down at the time, and that 
not once but twelve times, is on rec- 
ord. However you may account for 
it, telepathy, conscious or unconscious 
breaks down here. 



35 



IV. 

The lady whose initials were E. 
M., and whose tragic fate I have 
just described, had promised me that 
if she died before me she would do 
four things. She had constantly 
written automatically with my hand 
during her life. She promised, in 
the first place, that she would use my 
hand, if she could, after death, to 
tell me how it fared with her on the 
other side. In the second place, she 
promised that, if she could, she 
would appear to one or more of her 
friends to whom she could show her- 
self. In the third place, she would 
come to be photographed, and, 
fourthly, she would send me a mes- 
36 



THE DEAD RETURN 

sage through a medium, authenticat- 
ing the message by countersigning 
it with the simple mathematical fig- 
ure of a cross within a circle. 

E. M. did all four, (i) She has 
repeatedly written with my hand, ap- 
parently finding it just as easy to use 
my hand now as she did when still 
in the body. 

(2) She has repeatedly appeared 
to two friends of mine, one a woman, 
the other a man. She appeared once 
in a dining-room full of people. 
She passed unseen by any but her 
friend, who declares that she saw her 
distinctly. On another occasion she 
appeared in the street in broad day- 
light, walked for a little distance, and 
then vanished. I may say that her 
appearance was so original it would 
be difficult to mistake her for any- 
body else. 

37 



HOW I KNOW 

(3) She has been photographed at 
least half a dozen times after her 
death. All her portraits are plainly 
recognisable, but none of them are 
copies of any photographs taken in 
earth life. 

(4) There remains the test of a 
message accompanied by the sign of 
a cross within a circle. I did not 
get this for several months. I had 
almost given up all hopes, when one 
day a medium who was lunching 
with a friend of mine received it 'on 
the first attempt she made at auto- 
matic writing. "Tell William not 
to blame me for what I did. I could 
not help myself," was the message. 
Then came a plainly but roughly 
drawn circle, and inside it the cross. 
No one knew of our agreement as to 
the test but myself. I did not know 
the medium, I was not present, nor 

38 



THE DEAD RETURN 

was my friend expecting any mes- 
sage from E. M. 

Is it surprising, then, that after 
such experiences I have no more 
doubt of the possibility of communi- 
cating with the so-called dead than 
I have of being able to send this ar- 
ticle to the Editor of the FORTNIGHT- 
LY Review? 



39 



I have referred to spirit photog- 
raphy. Let me disarm any sceptical 
reader by admitting that nothing is 
more easy than to fake bogus spirit 
photographs, and further that an ex- 
pert conjurer can almost always cheat 
the most vigilant observer. The use 
of marked plates, which I handle, ex- 
pose, and develop myself, no doubt 
afford some protection against fraud. 
But my belief in the authenticity of 
spirit photographs rests upon a far 
firmer foundation than that of the 
fallible vigilance of the experi- 
menter. The supreme test of an au- 
thentic spirit photograph is that a 
plainly recognisable portrait of a 
40 



THE DEAD RETURN 

dead person shall be obtained by a 
photographer who knows nothing 
whatever of the existence of such a 
person, and that no visible form shall 
be seen by the sitter in front of the 
camera. 

I have had such photographs not 
once but many times. I will here 
only mention one. The photograph- 
er whose mediumship enables him to 
photograph the Invisibles is a very 
old and rather illiterate man, to 
whom this faculty was at one time a 
serious hindrance to his photographic 
business. He is a clairvoyant and 
clairaudient. During the late Boer 
war I went with a friend to have a 
sitting with him, wondering who 
would come. 

I had hardly taken my seat before 
the old man said: "I had a great 
fright the other day. An old Boer 
41 



HOW I KNOW 

came into the studio carrying a gun. 
He fairly frightened me, he looked 
so fierce, so I said to him, ( Go away; 
I don't like guns.' And he went 
away. Now he's back again. He 
came in with you. He has not got 
his gun now, and he does not look so 
fierce. Shall we let him stay?" 

"By all means," I replied. "Do 
you think you could get his photo- 
graph?" 

"I don't know," said the old man; 
"I can try." 

So I sat down in front of the cam- 
era, and an exposure was duly made. 
Neither my friend nor I could see 
any other person in the room but the 
photographer and ourselves. Be- 
fore the plate was removed I asked 
the photographer: 

"You spoke to the old Boer the 
42 



THE DEAD RETURN 

other day. Could you speak to him 
again?" 

"Yes," he said; "he's still there be- 
hind you." 

"Would he answer any question 
if you asked him?" 

"I don't know," said the old man; 
"I can try." 

"Ask him what his name is!" 

The photographer appeared to put 
a mental question, and to listen for a 
reply. Then he said: 

"He says his name is Piet Botha." 

"Piet Botha," I objected. "I 
know Philip, Louis, Chris, and I do 
not know how many other Bothas. 
But Piet I never heard of." 

"That's what he says his name is," 
doggedly replied the old man. 

When he developed the plate there 
was seen standing behind me a hir- 
43 



HOW I KNOW 

sure, tall, stalwart man, who might 
have been a Boer or a Moujik. I 
said nothing, but waited till the war 
came to an end, and General Botha 
came to London. I sent the photo- 
graph to him by Mr. Fischer, who 
was Prime Minister of the old Or- 
ange Free State. Next day Mr. 
Wessels, another Free State Dele- 
gate, came to see me. 

"Where did you get that photo- 
graph," he asked, "the photograph 
you gave to Mr. Fischer?" 

I told him exactly how it had 
come. 

He shook his head. "I don't hold 
with superstition. Tell me, how 
did you get that portrait? That man 
did not know William Stead — that 
man was never in England." 

"Well," I replied, "I have told 
you how I got it, and you need not 
44 



THE DEAD RETURN 

believe me if you don't like. But 
why are you so excited about it?" 

"Why?" said he, "because that 
man was a near relative of mine. I 
have got his portrait hanging up in 
my house at home." 

"Really," I said. "Is he dead?" 

"He was the first Boer Comman- 
dant killed in the siege of Kimber- 
ly." 

"And what was his name?" 

"Pietrus Johannes Botha," he re- 
plied, "but we always called him Piet 
Botha for short." 

I still have the portrait in my pos- 
session. It has been subsequently 
identified by two other Free Staters 
who knew Piet Botha well. 

This, at least, is not a case which 

telepathy can explain. Nor will the 

hypothesis of fraud hold water. It 

was the merest accident that I asked 

45 



THE DEAD RETURN 

the photographer to see if the spirit 
would give his name. No one in 
England, so far as I have been able 
to ascertain, knew that any Piet Bo- 
tha ever existed. 



46 



VI. 

What is wanted is that those who 
profess to disbelieve in the existence 
of life after death should honestly at- 
tempt to define the kind of evidence 
which they would consider convinc- 
ing. I have narrated in this paper 
what seems to me conclusive evi- 
dence of the continuance of person- 
ality after death. All of these inci- 
dents occurred in my own personal 
experience. Their credibility to 
my readers depends upon their esti- 
mate of my veracity. These things 
actually occurred as I have written 
them down. Supposing that they 
had happened to you, my reader, 
could you refuse to admit that there 
47 



HOW I KNOW 

is at least a prima facie case for a 
careful, exhaustive scientific examin- 
ation into the subject? What more 
evidence, what kind of evidence, un- 
der what conditions, is wanted, be- 
fore conviction is established? 

I ask no one hastily to accept any- 
thing on other people's testimony. 
It is true that all people are not me- 
diums, any more than all telephones 
can take Marconi messages. I am 
fortunate in being my own medium, 
which eliminates one possible hy- 
pothesis. But there are plenty of 
honest mediums, some possibly in 
your own family if you cared to seek 
for them. 

One last word. For the last fif- 
teen years I have been convinced by 
the pressure of a continually accumu- 
lating mass of first-hand evidence of 
the truth of the persistence of per- 
48 



THE DEAD RETURN 

sonality after death, and the possi- 
bility of intercourse with the depart- 
ed. But I always said, "I will wait 
until someone in my own family has 
passed beyond the grave before I 
finally declare my conviction on this 
subject." 

Twelve months ago this month of 
December I saw my eldest son, whom 
I had trained in the fond hope that 
he would be my successor, die at the 
early age of thirty-three. The tie 
between us was of the closest. No 
one could deceive me by fabricated 
spurious messages from my beloved 
son. 

Twelve months have now passed, 
in almost every week of which I have 
been cheered and comforted by mes- 
sages from my boy, who is nearer and 
dearer to me than ever before. The 
preceding twelve months I had been 
49 



THE DEAD RETURN 

much abroad. I heard less fre- 
quently from him in that year than 
I have heard from him since he 
passed out of our sight. I have not 
taken his communications by my own 
hand. I knew him so well that what 
I wrote might have been the uncon- 
scious echoes of converse in the past. 
He has communicated with me 
through the hands of two slight ac- 
quaintances, and they have been one 
and all as clearly stamped with the 
impress of his own character and 
mode of thought as any of the letters 
he wrote to me during his sojourn on 
earth. 

After this I can doubt no more. 
For me the problem is solved, the 
truth is established, and I am glad to 
have this opportunity of testifying 
publicly to all the world that, so far 
as I am concerned, doubt on this sub- 
ject is henceforth impossible. 
50 



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